Kidnap victim barely survived shattered skull

A YOUNG woman suffered such a severely shattered skull after she was kidnapped by her former boyfriend and fell out of a moving van that surgeons thought she would not survive.

Angel Lynn, then 19, was bundled into a van and driven away by Chay Bowskill, then aged 20, in Rothley, Leicestershire, in September 2020.

Now, television documentary research has found CT scans showing the extent of Miss Lynn’s injuries after falling from the van at 60mph. She was left paralysed, unable to eat or walk unaided and needs round-the-clock care.

Bowskill is serving a 12-year jail term for kidnap, coercive and controlling behaviour, and perverting the course of justice. He claimed Miss Lynn had either fallen or jumped from the van and was cleared of causing grievous bodily harm.

However, her mother, Nikki, said: “They said she was rolling down the road like a football. I think he pushed her out.”

The scans emerged in a Channel 4 documentary, The Kidnap of Angel Lynn, in which Stuart Smith, a consultant neurosurgeon, explained that Miss Lynn suffered such severe injuries that doctors thought she would die.

Pointing at a scan of her skull, he said: “This area here is fractured, it’s been split open from the force of the impact. To fracture the skull to that degree takes an incredible degree of force.”

Mrs Lynn revealed this week that her daughter has now been able to stand for the first time since the attack two and a half years ago. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, she said: “She’s doing really good. The physios are amazing. She gets a bit moody when she’s being bent around but it’s doing her the world of good.”